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An anonymous reader writes "The Beer Brewing Bender Project is finally completed. This is a fan built, full sized Bender from Futurama featuring a 6502 CPU powered brain to make him speak triggered by a prop remote control straight out of the show. Inside his body is a beer fermenter used to brew up a batch of real Benderbrau beer!"

Poopenmeyer: It's time to take action. [He presses the intercom.] Stephanie, cancel the maid for today. Have her come tomorrow. [He leans back into his chair.] Well, I'm out of ideas. Anyone?

Farnsworth: Wait! If we could build an object the exact size, density and consistency of the garbage ball, it might just knock the ball away without smashing it to bits.

Leela: But where can we find a substance the exact density and consistency as garbage?

Farnsworth: Alas, I don't know.

Fry: Uh, what about garbage?

Farnsworth: Good Lord! A second ball of garbage! That just might work!

Poopenmeyer: But garbage isn't something you just find lying in the streets of Manhattan. This city's been garbage-free for 500 years!

Fry: Then it's time to make some more.

Poopenmeyer: Make garbage? But how?

Fry: Stand back and watch the master! This Slurm can. [He knocks it on the floor.] Now it's garbage. These papers. [He sweeps them off the desk with his hands.] Garbage. This picture of your wife. [He drops it on the floor and the frame smashes.] Pure garbage. Now you try it.

Poopenmeyer picks up a pencil and drops it on the floor.

Poopenmeyer: By God, I think the boy's got something. Come on, everyone! The fate of the city is at stake!

He turns a chair on its side.

Fry: Good! [He turns to Leela.] Don't finish that cruller, throw it away [Leela throws it on the floor.] Bender. Drink that beer and drop the bottle on the ground. [Bender throws the bottle on the floor.] Very nice.

I just told all my friends to start drinking Corona, or MGD (pry off) or even Grolsch with the flip top. Now that I have enough bottles for 2 batches (23 liters each!) I can start trading full beer to my friends for their empties. Works out at around a dollar a liter.

For Christmas, my wife bought me 2 cases of 20 oz, dark brown bottles and a big bag of caps.And she says she's going to plant hops along our fence line this Spring (since hops have become so expensive of late).What a woman!

"I just told all my friends to start drinking Corona, or MGD (pry off) or even Grolsch with the flip top."

Uh, you're going to be bottling in CLEAR bottles??? As as experienced beer brewer, I recommend that you DON'T use clear. The best bottles to use will be brown, followed by green (which I never use). I'm sure you've heard it before, but light is the enemy of beer. It'll skunk it quickly. The Grolsch bottles are okay, but sometimes those rubber seals will fail, and then when you bottle-condition t

I'm currently experimenting with this. I produced one case (24 12oz bottles) of a honey wheat ale. Six Corona bottles and the rest are standard brown. All the bottles are conditioned in a (relatively) dark cabinet. The batch should be ready to drink by next weekend, so I'll be able to test the light theory.

You'd be better off with the coopers plastic bottles than those corona bottles.If you DO use clear glass make damn sure you keep your beer away from sunlight.I'd also be worried about how thin the glass for those bottles is... exploding bottles are no fun at all.

Yeah, I didn't take the time to memorize the code when I was watching the DVD, or pay too much attention to exactly what the digit sequence was. But for posting here, of course, I wanted to get it right.:D

But I did learn that there's a very simple way to remember it... it's a count from 1 to 6 with a mirror-imaged copy... Funny how the secrets to the universe have such a simple basis.

I love reading projects like this one. I've got to wonder about how one lives in New Zealand to be able to find time to build this beer-brewing Bender.

I wish I was versatile enough to know how to wire up a 6502-based audio board w/wireless remote AND do the basic carpentry AND the fiberglass and painting AND brew beer. He's even got an arc-welder, as seen in his video of him destroying his HP printer (link on the last page of TFA)

Hell, my wife wishes I knew how to change a washer in the bathroom faucet.

Basic woodworking, fiberglassing, painting, and welding are all fairly simple skills -- they just take a bit of practice. Being an artisan capable of earning a living doing any of the above may be a different story, but hobby-level skills aren't all that hard to learn. That leave the electronics, and, well, this is slashdot, so you likely know that or know someone who would love to do a project like that.

If you really want to learn other stuff, check with your local community college, see if they have any intro-to-X type evening or weekend classes that'd fit your schedule. Most community colleges have some sort of intro-to-welding class, and I'd imagine a basic carpentry class isn't uncommon.

To start with it's a bit of a stab in the dark to learn arc welding (bad pun doesn't apply with the more expensive face sheilds) but it only takes a couple of hours to be able to stick some simple stuff together.

That ain't an arc welder (electric), its an oxy-acetylene torch (sometimes known as a "gas axe" because it cuts through anything), and it seems they are indeed very effective at "fixing" problem HP printers.

For the electronics part, start with Radio Shack. They have several simple books to get you started with hobby electronics. I once knew a very intelligent electrical engineer who first became enamored with electronics by doing exactly that and still recommended it as a good way of getting into electronics without getting overwhelmed. If you ever want to gain even more practical knowledge about electronics I would recommend the ARRL handbook [amazon.com] (used by ham radio operators everywhere).

If you listen to the DVD commentary for Futurama (I forget which episode), the creators note that they intentionally gave computers in the show a Mac-like interface in the hopes of getting free stuff from Apple. (They tell Steve Jobs: "It's not too late!") Of course the Mac serving as a judge in "Fear of a Bot Planet" did freeze at one point, so they haven't portrayed Macs in a completely positive light. Still, if I had to guess, I'd say Mac OS (or OS X) is probably Bender's favorite OS.It is pretty safe

Am I the only one who read the summary as stating this thing having 6502 CPUs as a brain?

Aside from welcoming our new shiny-metal-ass-and-overpowered-brain-overlords I was rather stunned how you could cram that amount of chips into something less than the size of a small home.../me gets more coffee...

Well, he did sit on the stove to brew the beer, so that's some of the energy input. The other energy input is in the starch. But I'm just wrecking the fun. Honestly, I'd prefer he just be a beer cooler, peltier powered. If he were to geek it up, he could make it a dispenser or something.

In the episode where Fry tried to use the professor's F-Ray to find the winning Slurm bottle cap, at one point the F-Ray was pointed at Bender's head and revealed a 6502 (just watched this episode again the other day, thanks to Cartoon Network's recent marathon). So Beer Brewing Bender's designers knew what they were doing.

I used to brew some beer myself and the home kit the guy is using makes for pisspoor beer. And also beer from plastic bottles!!! blasphemy

You want to be using real ingredients not the beersyrup this guy uses. Real barley and hops. Most small breweries also sell to individuals.

Heat the barley in a pan with sufficient water (as in how much beer you want) and look up a schematic for the heating. Essentially this means heating your mixture to a designated temperature and keeping it there for a period of time. Different temperatures make the barley release different sugars. there are different temperature schemes. Experiment with a few you can really see the difference.

Add half your hops at the beginning and the other half halfway trough the heating process

Then strain your beer a few times until it has the desired clarity (can be influenced by the type of barley)and cool the mixture down so the yeast survives when you add it. It is good practice to activate your yeast before adding

The beerbender does use a handy fermenting vat. These are actually quite cheap. Keep the beer for at least 1 week at around 24 degrees celsius

The botteling is next. If you like beer you surely have some glass beer bottles. Buy a bottlecapper and some caps. Again really cheap.

You can use sugar drops to get the CO2 in the bottle but about 2-4 grams of plain sugar also works. I like using some honey as it can be tasted later.But an absolute winner is the brown caster sugar

cap the bottles with the sugar and again wait for minimally 2 weeks at 24 degrees before consuming

this way you can vary your beer way more than using some kit. You can experiment with different barley,hops,heating schemes,yeasts,storing times,straining and sugars.

Agreed, the beer he is brewing will be absolutely disgusting. Probably far too malty, with no smoothness.I am a homebrewer, and the method you described is just one of many different ways. The temperature for boiling the mash, the times for addition of the hops, the types of barley and hops used, even the type of yeast will all affect the quality and flavor of your beer.

If someone on Slashdot is interested in starting a homebrew project the best place to start is with this book [howtobrew.com]. It gives basic instructions

Agreed, the beer he is brewing will be absolutely disgusting. Probably far too malty, with no smoothness.

I doubt it will be awesome, but there's a reasonable chance it won't be disgusting. It's clear that he is using hopped (pre-bittered) LME. [homebrewtalk.com] He's not adding any finishing hops for taste/aroma, but I bet the malt/bitter balance is going to be about right -- I've used hopped LME a couple times, and it contributed an even balance. I wouldn't use it in some kind of hop-showcase APA or IPA, but for a gener

A better way to start is to get a high-quality kit. In larger cities in the US, at least in the Midwest, you can find homebrew supply stores that sell everything you need or could possibly want. A couple of my favorite stores are Midwest Supplies [midwestsupplies.com] and Brew and Grow of Minnesota [brewngrow.com]. (The 'grow' refers to hydroponic gardening, which I don't do. I have avoided asking what they grow and if they sell seeds.:P)

Midwest Supplies will sell you kits ranging from the basics, doing your fermentation in a plastic buc

From a perpetual beginner, and lazy-assed brewer we are Mostly Agreed. The Charlie Papazian book is *the* homebrewer's bible.Here's my $0.02 of Things I've Learned Homebrewing. Doing this will make sure you get a nice drinkable brew, and not a container full of Septic System Helper:

Aside from the rack-over tubing and bottling wand, the beer should touch only stainless steel during the boiling process. I use a plastic funnel to assist in transferring the wort from the pot to the carboy, and haven't had any i

Wow, that was a bit um... loose with the brewing process. You seem to add your hops to the mash and not the boil which seems to be missing altogether, and your description of lautering is also interesting. Anyone wanting to really know how to make beer check out http://www.howtobrew.com/ [howtobrew.com]. Yes the guy is peddling his book on the website, but the older edition is there at http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html [howtobrew.com] and is free to read online. It will take you through both extract and all grain brewing.

I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the following company, but have used them for years in my own home brewing adventures. They're based in Arizona, but ship all over the place and have some pretty decent prices. They sell kits (basically pre-packaged recipes) or individual bags of barley, hops, yeast, etc.

I know quite a few people already responded to your beer methodology, but the beer nerd in me can't help but put in a few words along with them.

First of all, you're absolutely right that his beer is probably gonna taste like crap (or "sparkling pond water" as John Palmer puts it). That said, there's nothing wrong with using extract, or "beersyrup" as you call it (though admittedly the pre-hopped stuff is worthy of derision). A lot of award-winning beers have been made from extracts with steeping grains. M

I typed it up in half a minute and forgot the boiling of the wort (thanks for the word wasn't sure it was the same in English). I also didn't mention the cleaning and sterilizing part. I even forgot to include the formulas for the amount of the ingredients.

Sorry about that but the links everybody else gave seem good enough.

As for the extra work of grain brewing. It only costs you an hour and a half or so more. In my opinion worth it.

You keep posting, but all I read is "Whaaaaaah, Whaaaaah, Whaaaaaa".
Oh, and by the way, the sundry crap that is filler in the frame is still called a prop for digital animation. They can even have live actors in real-time motion capture animation sequences interact with digital only props. Check out the book "Understanding Motion Capture for Computer Animation and Video Games". Yes, I know that Futurama doesn't use motion capture, but the things are still called props, even if they are just parts of a

By the "logic" in your original complaint - there are no remote controls used in the show. It's all just bits in a computer or ink on paper. There can also be no characters in the show... if one follows your unreasonable complaint to its logical conclusion.